When the Mist Recedes

I wish more of you had met Misty when she was younger--even just a year ago, when she could still climb the stairs and jump up and down like a kangaroo. Now she is dying. Several times a day she goes into convulsions, then falls over. Sometimes she yowls: a cry of pain as if she were being eaten by the neighborhood coyotes (the sad fate of many pets in Porter Ranch each summer.)

It's been a sad week, in a cumulative sort of way. I could see 20-20, but one of my grandfathers went blind for ten minutes--most likely a small stroke. My grandmother suffered a stroke, too, a larger one, or a combination of several, and lost the ability to walk. My mother flew to Chile to spend the weekend with them. That left me Misty. And I want her to live long enough for my mother to get back and say goodbye.

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In happier news, I attended a political rally yesterday. John Kerry came to Valley College to endorse Antonio Villaraigosa. In many ways it felt like a leftover bit of the 2004 campaign. Bush-Cheney supporters showed up chanting "four more years" and flaunting anti-Kerry signs.

At one point, the microphone blew out. Kerry continued to orate, in his kind of clumsy, kind of affable way, for a few mute seconds before realizing no one could hear him. The crowd grew uneasy. The Bush-Cheney chanting grew louder. Then a man with a shock of white hair and a considerable tummy stepped forward, lifted his hands, and began singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

Everyone took it up--and while that melody of hope and pride drifted off-tune through a warm spring afternoon, the Bush-Cheney supporters quietly exited stage left.